Hiya. This is probably going to be one of those roll-your-eyes, RTFM style questions, but here goes:

I have a Sparc UltraII Axi 333Mhz with 1Ghz of ram sitting here that was donated by a friend (yeah it was a dot.com box at one time running Solaris or something). The box has two 18 gig scsi drives, a CD-ROM, floppy, zip, latest Openboot, on board Ethernet, and an ATI vid card that works - initial tests prove that Gentoo likes it enough to see the install discs, etc. It runs, it boots, it hummeth and clacketh with great SCSI zest. And it wants Gentoo. I think.

Is this machine worth the trouble, or is it a dinosaur? What's the benefit of 64 bit? I mean, if I run Apache/Perl/ MySQL/serverstuff etc, are these running in 64 bit mode? I don't understand the whole 64 bit phenomenon, and what the heck is the deal with "32 bit userland" etc. I mean if these apps are running 32 bit anyway what's the point? If my emerge and compile goes ok, is it going to run circles around my PIII 750 SMP running Gentoo?

I'd probably use this just as a server (duh) and maybe try to run a site or something. Not sure. I just don't want to waste what I've got and I want to approach it properly.

A general FAQ link, other info URLs, or a specific answer would be much appreciated. I need some reasons to delve into this install besides "it's cool", cause my "it's cool" list is kinda big and getting unmanageable. I'm going to ask the opinions of the Gentoo guys at Linuxworld this week, but I'd like to put this out to the forum as well.

In short, what would YOU guys do with this beastie?_________________- L202

It is a nice machine to run Gentoo on, especially if you want to run it as a server. The processor isn't the fastest in the world so getting it up and running is probably going to take some time if you are going to install from stage 1-3, but again, if it is only going to work as a server then X and the heavy GUI stuff won't be needed, which is the stuff that usually takes the longest to compile.

You won't be seeing the benefits of 64 bit with that machine. The real benefit is when a process needs to address more than 4 GB of memory then you can do it with a 64 bit OS, but not with a 32 bit one. So to see the benefits you will need to have more than 4 GB of internal memory installed and then a process that wants to grow beyond that. Don't get cought up in the hype around 64 bit stuff

Sun CPU's have been 64 bit for quite some time (since the Ultra 1 machines if I am not mistaken) so installing a 64 bit OS is simply logical. A 64 bit OS such as Linux or Solaris can also run the 32 bit applications without any issues even though the underlying OS is 64 bit.

I don't think that this machine will run circles around your 750 MHz SMP box though. However, if you got IDE disks in your SMP box then this machine will be faster accessing disk if you are running many disk-dependent applications at once.

Before the above starts a flame war, like it always does for some odd reason then let me explain exactly what I mean. My SMP x86 box at home with IDE disks is a great machine. However, if I am doing disk-intensive work and I try to start a program like Mozilla for example then it will take some time for Mozilla to start regardless of cpu status. On SMP machines I have worked on (Sun and x86) with fast SCSI systems, the delay of starting Mozilla (for example) won't be as noticeable. IDE disks in any shape or form are simply not built with the same type of multitasking capability like SCSI. And no, I am not pro SCSI and anti IDE! I use IDE at home because they are quiet, cheap and because the capabilities of SCSI are not used that extensively on a desktop system. I do however believe that IDE disks have no place in servers that see heavy disk I/O work.

So to summarize, I don't think you will be wasting your time installing Gentoo, especially if you intend to run it as a server.

Hiya. This is probably going to be one of those roll-your-eyes, RTFM style questions, but here goes:

RTFM

L202 wrote:

I have a Sparc UltraII Axi 333Mhz with 1Ghz of ram sitting here that was donated by a friend (yeah it was a dot.com box at one time running Solaris or something). The box has two 18 gig scsi drives, a CD-ROM, floppy, zip, latest Openboot, on board Ethernet, and an ATI vid card that works

Sounds nice Expecially the 1GHz RAM

L202 wrote:

What's the benefit of 64 bit? I mean, if I run Apache/Perl/ MySQL/serverstuff etc, are these running in 64 bit mode? I don't understand the whole 64 bit phenomenon, and what the heck is the deal with "32 bit userland" etc. I mean if these apps are running 32 bit anyway what's the point?

On Gentoo/Sparc, the Kernel is compiled as 64bit binary while all applications (userland) are 32bit.
64bit doesnt make much sense if you use below 4 GB of ram or dont have to work with big numbers (like for crypto stuff). On Sparc, 32bit userland is faster than 64bit. Solaris uses a mixed 32/64 bit userland on top of a 64bit Kernel.

L202 wrote:

If my emerge and compile goes ok, is it going to run circles around my PIII 750 SMP running Gentoo?

You cant match it exactly to a Pentium class CPU and for sure not to a SMP box. If you are a benchmark fan, emerge and run 'nbench' and compare to these values: http://0x1337.net/pub/nbench.txt
I compared my normal clocked Ultra5, the same box overclocked and a Blade 100 in this benchmark.

My primary box is this 440 MHz U5 with 512 MB ram and its fast enough to do all my normal day work with it. The only lack is the slow and low ram graphic (no video/dvd fun ).

L202 wrote:

I'd probably use this just as a server (duh) and maybe try to run a site or something. Not sure. I just don't want to waste what I've got and I want to approach it properly.

It would run great as a server. 333MHz is on the bottom edge for a desktop (>400 MHz prefered, but my first Sun desktop box had 333MHz too, and the speed was ok.) but for a server its sure enough.

L202 wrote:

A general FAQ link, other info URLs, or a specific answer would be much appreciated.

I need some reasons to delve into this install besides "it's cool", cause my "it's cool" list is kinda big and getting unmanageable.

It rocks, makes you 1337 and the chicks dig it. Plus working with Sun hardware is just great. I miss the quality of these boxen in current x86 peecee hardware Nowadays people just look at prices and clockspeeds (/me sighs).

L202 wrote:

I'm going to ask the opinions of the Gentoo guys at Linuxworld this week, but I'd like to put this out to the forum as well.

Make sure you pester Weeve, the hariy, pizza munching geek sitting in front of a Blade 150 at the Gentoo booth, showing some eye candy of Gentoo Linux/Sparc

L202 wrote:

In short, what would YOU guys do with this beastie?

As I have faster machines for desktop use, I'd use it as a test/development box (hey, I am dev ) or, as you said, as a server. If you worked with Solaris before, install Gentoo on the second drive, play around with it and see how much faster it is compared to Solaris. Faster filesystems, faster userland and a larger hardware support thanks to the Linux kernel are just 3 facts which speak for Linux on Sparc._________________Gentoo Linux/Sparc Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~bazik/

How did you overclock your U5? I got one (360Mega-smackers) lying around unused and I was thinking about putting it into Gentoo-use. What sort of overclockability can I expect and stability under overclocking?

Overclocking is fun to learn about hardware and stuff but I value stability over 5-10% speed increase which might make it unstable. I would love to hear of your ventures though..._________________Punk is an attitude
not a fashion style

Yup, I have overclocked several of my x86 machines sucessfully, even from the time when Pentium 75's were extremely expensive and close to top of the line (P90 and P100's were the rage back then) - and overclocking wasn't all what it is today. I overclocked all of my original Pentiums, often as much as 30% without seeing stability issues.

The one system that I overclocked and ran successfully without any issues was a 400MHz Celeron at 450 (FSB from 66 to 75 MHz). Sure, it could go beyond that, but hard gaming (back then) would make the computer freeze after awhile. But 450MHz gave me no issues.

With today's machines I don't bother. My main machine is an XP2400+. Lets say I would take the time to massively test it for overclocking and I would reach the conclusion that it can run stable at 2.1 GHz istead of 2.0. That is a 5% increase Hardly worth the effort.

That is why I was interested to hear more about OCing the U5. If it can safely be moved a notch or three then it might be worth it _________________Punk is an attitude
not a fashion style

Well you see my 1700+(1466MHz) is OCed to 2450MHz. That's a good boost, and the reason why I haven't bought anything new in so long. I don't fell like there is much in the x86 world that can best it for as cheap as it was($46). I also have that G3-233@300. That made a world of difference in that machine.
I wish I could try and OC the Sparc5, but my eye-sight isn't so great with small details, and my soldering suffers because of it._________________Gentoo systems.
X2 4200+@2.6 - Athy
X2 3600+ - Myth
UltraSparc5 440 - sparcy